Spurs Brazil
01-26-2007, 09:15 PM
http://www.forbes.com/home/free_forbes/2007/0212/084.html
It's How You Play the Game
Kurt Badenhausen 02.12.07
Led by owner Peter Holt, a war hero and recovering alcoholic, the San Antonio Spurs have become the model NBA franchise.
For the past couple of seasons the best way for a pro basketball player to make the evening news has been to start a bench-clearing brawl or run up into the stands to attack the fans. Not so in sleepy San Antonio, the league's third-smallest market. It's home to the talented and very gentlemanly Spurs, who have won three NBA titles in the past eight years and have the highest winning percentage among major professional sports teams in the past decade. The team is worth $390 million, 11% higher than last year and $37 million above the league average.
Last season the team posted operating income (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $11.7 million on revenues of $122 million, compared with $6.9 million of $112 million for the average NBA team. Fans have filled the AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) Center to 98% capacity the past four seasons, versus 89% for the rest of the NBA, and have rented all of the 60 luxury suites at prices ranging from $160,00 to $240,000 a season.
A big reason has been stability. Gregg Popovich, now in his eleventh season as coach, is one of only two NBA coaches in place more than four seasons. (The other is Jerry Sloan of the Utah Jazz.)
And Spurs owner Peter Holt, 58, a Vietnam hero--Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, Purple Heart--who before rehab in 1981 had a long history of alcohol abuse. He does not like controversy. He refuses to spend big bucks on prima donna stars and has instead built his team with young players who excel more on the hardwood than on the police blotter.
To date no Spur, for example, has gotten in trouble for shooting a gun outside a nightclub, as Golden State Warrior guard Stephen Jackson allegedly did earlier this season.
Forward Tim Duncan, drafted in 1997, is a role model both on and off the court and has twice been named the league's MVP. Point guard Tony Parker has been one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" and is the fiancé of desperate housewife Eva Longoria, whose family lives in San Antonio.
Rather than sign the flashy college underclassmen for whom most NBA teams so ravenously compete, Holt goes overseas for 70% of his draft picks, who continue to play for their foreign teams until they prove themselves. The Spurs drafted Argentinean guard Manu Ginobili, for example, in 1999 but didn't sign him until three years later. Ginobili was an NBA all-star within two years. "We look at character first, then skill," says Holt, whose team now includes players from Slovenia, France and the Netherlands.
Holt reinforces the team's untarnished image by pumping money into charities. The Spurs Foundation has contributed $10 million in cash and gifts to help the children of southern Texas over the past two decades. "They have exemplified what a team can mean to a community," says NBA Commissioner David Stern.
It wasn't always this way. In the mid-1990s the franchise was in disarray. The Spurs had 20 owners (mostly local businessmen), were struggling to make money and had plenty of controversy, thanks to bad boy Dennis Rodman, who was traded to the Chicago Bulls in 1995. The Spurs were playing in an outmoded arena built for football, depriving the team of the lucrative luxury-suite income other nba teams were starting to enjoy.
Holt, whose great-grandfather invented the first track-type tractor (which led to the formation of Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people )), came to the rescue in 1996. He had taken over his father's Cat dealership in southern Texas in 1984 and had built it into the largest in the U.S. Holt bought a controlling 32% of the team in a deal that valued the Spurs at just over $75 million. Holt fired the old coach and persuaded Popovich to add coaching to his general manager duties. "I didn't know anything my first year," says Holt. "I was a Caterpillar man."
Popovich drafted Duncan a year later, and the team won its first title in 1999. On the day the Spurs were handed the championship rings for their first title, the public was voting on whether to put up taxpayer money for the bulk of a new $175 million stadium. The plebiscite won with 61% of the vote. Opening in 2002, the new AT&T Center helped revenues climb 50% that year, and the team turned its first operating profit ($19 million) after three moneylosing years.
For two of the past three years ESPN magazine has named the Spurs the best franchise in sports, based on a composite ranking of such things as fan feedback, championships and owner loyalty. The Spurs could hold on to that title-- barring any fistfights at half-court.
http://images.forbes.com/media/magazines/forbes/2007/0212/Forbes_0212_p85_noslamdunk.gif
It's How You Play the Game
Kurt Badenhausen 02.12.07
Led by owner Peter Holt, a war hero and recovering alcoholic, the San Antonio Spurs have become the model NBA franchise.
For the past couple of seasons the best way for a pro basketball player to make the evening news has been to start a bench-clearing brawl or run up into the stands to attack the fans. Not so in sleepy San Antonio, the league's third-smallest market. It's home to the talented and very gentlemanly Spurs, who have won three NBA titles in the past eight years and have the highest winning percentage among major professional sports teams in the past decade. The team is worth $390 million, 11% higher than last year and $37 million above the league average.
Last season the team posted operating income (in the sense of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) of $11.7 million on revenues of $122 million, compared with $6.9 million of $112 million for the average NBA team. Fans have filled the AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) Center to 98% capacity the past four seasons, versus 89% for the rest of the NBA, and have rented all of the 60 luxury suites at prices ranging from $160,00 to $240,000 a season.
A big reason has been stability. Gregg Popovich, now in his eleventh season as coach, is one of only two NBA coaches in place more than four seasons. (The other is Jerry Sloan of the Utah Jazz.)
And Spurs owner Peter Holt, 58, a Vietnam hero--Silver Star, three Bronze Stars, Purple Heart--who before rehab in 1981 had a long history of alcohol abuse. He does not like controversy. He refuses to spend big bucks on prima donna stars and has instead built his team with young players who excel more on the hardwood than on the police blotter.
To date no Spur, for example, has gotten in trouble for shooting a gun outside a nightclub, as Golden State Warrior guard Stephen Jackson allegedly did earlier this season.
Forward Tim Duncan, drafted in 1997, is a role model both on and off the court and has twice been named the league's MVP. Point guard Tony Parker has been one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" and is the fiancé of desperate housewife Eva Longoria, whose family lives in San Antonio.
Rather than sign the flashy college underclassmen for whom most NBA teams so ravenously compete, Holt goes overseas for 70% of his draft picks, who continue to play for their foreign teams until they prove themselves. The Spurs drafted Argentinean guard Manu Ginobili, for example, in 1999 but didn't sign him until three years later. Ginobili was an NBA all-star within two years. "We look at character first, then skill," says Holt, whose team now includes players from Slovenia, France and the Netherlands.
Holt reinforces the team's untarnished image by pumping money into charities. The Spurs Foundation has contributed $10 million in cash and gifts to help the children of southern Texas over the past two decades. "They have exemplified what a team can mean to a community," says NBA Commissioner David Stern.
It wasn't always this way. In the mid-1990s the franchise was in disarray. The Spurs had 20 owners (mostly local businessmen), were struggling to make money and had plenty of controversy, thanks to bad boy Dennis Rodman, who was traded to the Chicago Bulls in 1995. The Spurs were playing in an outmoded arena built for football, depriving the team of the lucrative luxury-suite income other nba teams were starting to enjoy.
Holt, whose great-grandfather invented the first track-type tractor (which led to the formation of Caterpillar (nyse: CAT - news - people )), came to the rescue in 1996. He had taken over his father's Cat dealership in southern Texas in 1984 and had built it into the largest in the U.S. Holt bought a controlling 32% of the team in a deal that valued the Spurs at just over $75 million. Holt fired the old coach and persuaded Popovich to add coaching to his general manager duties. "I didn't know anything my first year," says Holt. "I was a Caterpillar man."
Popovich drafted Duncan a year later, and the team won its first title in 1999. On the day the Spurs were handed the championship rings for their first title, the public was voting on whether to put up taxpayer money for the bulk of a new $175 million stadium. The plebiscite won with 61% of the vote. Opening in 2002, the new AT&T Center helped revenues climb 50% that year, and the team turned its first operating profit ($19 million) after three moneylosing years.
For two of the past three years ESPN magazine has named the Spurs the best franchise in sports, based on a composite ranking of such things as fan feedback, championships and owner loyalty. The Spurs could hold on to that title-- barring any fistfights at half-court.
http://images.forbes.com/media/magazines/forbes/2007/0212/Forbes_0212_p85_noslamdunk.gif